San Diego has little room to talk trash

Published: Wednesday, October 04, 2000

To start with, it's a city with the worst team in the NFL that's hazing us. The Chargers' record is even more lame than the Bengals'. It's a city that once had an NBA basketball team, and that team turned into the Los Angeles Clippers.

So how does anybody from San Diego come off giving lip in any direction, least of all this one?

Someone e-mailed us a while back in regard to how a publication called the San Diego Reader, by way of a football contest it sponsors, took a sarcastic poke at Lubbock. The next week, another e-mail. This week, a friend wrote a letter to the editor.

Sportingbox.com, the web site, is gettin' our goats on this deal, and I don't mean the goats some San Diego people seem to think we keep penned up in our back yard.

If you haven't heard, at Sportingbox.com there is a football contest in which the last-place finisher for the entire season gets sent to Lubbock, portrayed as sort of an American Siberia, only warmer. You know the drill: Go see the y'all drawlers, the hay haulers, the people with 10-gallon hats on their head and cowflop on their boots.

''Do you grasp the vision? A corner room in the local Motel 6. You and that special guy, gal or family pet. Add a long, leisurely, after-hours stroll through the cattle yards of Lubbock. Can you say, 'Romance!'?''

A massive longhorn dominates the artist's rendering of Lubbock, although I must say it's some spacious green pastureland behind the cow and a good nine or 10 trees. (Psst! Guys. You do a lousy job perpetuating the dusty flatland stereotype, drawing in all the grass and trees.)

I assume the contest is on the level, which means some lucky San Diegan will be sent here, see a Lubbock girl and, naturally, stay forever. I dialed the Reader and left a message for the person in charge of contest prizes, some guy named Patrick. I didn't hear back from anybody. I assume they're waiting for me to run the string from my tin can to theirs.

Which, of course, would have involved my getting to Southern California.

The last time I was in Southern California on a sports assignment, getting to the hotel was anxiety central. I kept the windows rolled up, the doors locked and tried to time the traffic lights, not for the sake of fuel economy but for the sake of not getting carjacked by the dudes on the corner.

OK, to be fair, that was in L.A., not San Diego.

I think San Diego wishes it were L.A. Or San Jose. Or Lubbock if it were lucky.

They have it all over us with what?

In football, they have the Chargers, 0-and-5.

In basketball, they had the Clippers.

In baseball, they have the Padres, who could never get it right on the uniforms.

In hockey, they have no NHL team, which means points off in any quality of life discussion involving L.A., Anaheim, San Jose or Phoenix.

In college sports, remind me, is San Diego State in the WAC or the Mountain West?

In football contests, they have a rule that wouldn't fly in Texas.

To be eligible for contest prizes, it says at Sportingbox.com, ''You must play eight weeks during the course of the NFL season, including playoffs and the Super Bowl (21 weeks).''

Compete eight weeks out of 21? That must be the Charger Rule.

And that's just in sports. Lubbock wins way of life by even more of a blowout. San Diego would be jealous of our women, couldn't touch our Tex-Mex, not to mention our barbecue, and couldn't relate to Interstate 27, what with no traffic jams and all.

If the uppity San Diego people would like to discuss it further, drop by. I'll be out back, getting my longhorn steers ready to sic 'em.

Don Williams may be contacted by phone at 766-8734 or by e-mail at dwilliams@lubbockonline.com.